It is known to weave diapers in the form of rectangular blanks, adapted to be folded to smaller rectangles for application to babies. It is also common practice to weave such diapers in a multilayered gauze-like construction, and to prefold such diapers and sew the folded blank to secure the folds in fixed position. These are termed prefolded diapers or simply prefolds.
It is also realized that wet diapers next to a baby's skin promote discomfort and even diaper rash, and attempts have been made to create diapers in which the face of the diaper to be applied next to the skin is of a hydrophobic or non-absorbent nature. Such attempts are illustrated by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,113,570 and 3,216,421. All such previous attempts, however, have been unsuccessful due to the fact that they utilized hydrophobic yarns, such as yarns of polyamide, polyester, polyolefin and the like. Such yarns, while of lower absorbency than cotton or rayon yarns, also have a much lower shrinkage in the normal processes of purification of the woven fabric, and the subsequent multiple launderings to which the diaper is subjected. Normally, purification of a cotton diaper fabric, woven in the grey state, involves a shrinkage of between 10% and 11% in the warp direction. Since hydrophobic yarns, composed of synthetic polymers, show little or no shrinkage in such a purification process or subsequent laundering, the result is buckling and distortion of the plane of the fabric, with the development of corrugations and uneven hems, when such yarns are used in prior art diapers.
Furthermore, the elongation characteristics of hydrophobic yarns differ from the characteristics of cotton or rayon hydrophilic yarns, making them difficult to handle in the slashing and weaving process, which involves the use of a warp beam of yarns under considerable tension. Such a warp beam, composed of many hundreds of warp yarns, is conventionally fed to the loom with the yarns protected by a water-soluble size or coating removed in subsequent processing. Hydrophobic yarns are not readily wet by such coatings, necessitating special processing to assimilate them into the warp beam.